The recent changes turning ladder only content to be also available into non ladder will have a big impact into the game replayability, making it much more easy to complete your fully geared chars and decreasing the game longevity.
With the previous ladder only content system, the vast majority of the players only did magic find runs in the ladder mode. This required a big effort to first make a char efficient for mfing every season and later on to get the gear you wanted to carry on to your non ladder characters to improve their gear. This task many times ended before being accomplished, pushing players to try again and again during different seasons to get their top tier gear and thus keeping a healthy ammount of players replaying evey ladder.
Now that the requirement of playing ladders to get exclusive content no longer exists, players will finish their perfect chars much faster than before, decreasing the replayability and longevity of the game.
The best fix for this is to revert the bad decission of removing ladder only content, at least after the first ladder ends.
The other option that could attenuate the damage done to the game with that bad decission would be to decrease drop rates, so players wont finish their chars so fast.
In my opinion, a general decrease in drop rates would be good for the game after this bad change, but at least a decrease in drop rates for non ladder in a noticeable rate, yet not excessive, of around 20-30% would be good for keeping the game replayable and alive for a long time. This also would push players to play every ladder season for mfing there.
i personally don’t think it was a bad decision , especially considering the decrease in ladder duration.
It would be more frustrating than anything for the playerbase if you had to farm HR in mere 2-3 months and use them before the end of said ladder.
that being said , i would prefer a decrease in drop rate rather than an increase true , but i would rather the drop rate stay the same if i could choose.
Most players played ladder for the fresh start anyway i think personally, one or two ladders was usually enough to get yourself the ladder-only items you wanted so i doubt people would have continued ladder if it was solely for items. (i usually gave everything away after every ladder simply because i wanted to play ladder only)
NL was always sandbox like as in most people had everything they wanted (bots didn’t help either though).
That being said , to me , the blow to ladder wasn’t the removal of “ladder-only” items , but the decrease in ladder duration.
6 months was awesome , if they reduce it to something like 3 months , even as a ladder lover , if i have some heavy work scheduled i might skip some ladder from time to time solely due to that.
Another point would be the value of items as ladder nears end. Currently on ladder, the items actually go up a little before ladder ends because of non ladder players trying to get ladder items to take with them. On non ladder, they are anxiously awaiting an influx of ladder only items which stimulates the trade market. What will happen now is items will just continue to lose their value on ladder until they are worthless by the final day, and non ladder items will just steadily decline in value for the length of the game with big drops when ladder ends.
Technically most ladder only uniques were barely any better than non-ladder stuff. A lot of which nobody used for anything other than stopgaps. I don’t think the game’s in harm’s way by way of current drop rates. But I do feel drop rates for runes needs to return to pre-1.13 rates. Not for any sort of balance/longevity reasons but because I enjoyed finding HRs very very very infrequently.
If you played ladder previously, wich im sure you did, you have noticed that the vast majority of the players leave it after the first 2-3 months, so the decrease in the duration wont affect too much to the viability of getting the gear you need/want there. I also think that the 6 months amrk is the perfect one.
System was perfect before the ladder only content was introduced into non ladder, that broke the balance and a decrease in the drop rates,a t least for non ladder, would bring back some of the balance lost.
indeed there was fewer games (and more bots) the more months passed.
though it didn’t affect me much , considering i was mostly Solo self loot (and still will be in D2 R) and the few times i played in multi was with friends from time to time.
i’am kinda sad that it’s not longer 6 months though, might have been too long for most , but to me as a self looter it was perfect.
Another thing is , i’am a hoarder , i usually have 5 accounts every ladder , just to store things and making weird build.
I’am a bit sad on that too , 20 char slots is not enough in my opinion.
well if i had to choose , yes i would prefer a decrease rather than an increase.
But personally i would simply prefer for it to stay as it is in 1.14D , but that’s my opinion
Runewords are an entirely different beast on their own, and again, I feel runes need to have their drop rates decreased as I said in the post you’re referring to - but certainly not for balance correction. The drop rates are okay, and won’t pose much of an issue as is, but definitely feel they need to be brought back to pre-1.13 levels.
Never really saw much use in Andariel’s Gaze. Tomb Reaver’s and Reaper’s Toll are merc items and as such doesn’t affect your build much. But I see where you’re coming from, which is why I said “a lot of” in reference to “most”. Not “all”.
Runes are fine. Making them harder again only invites more botting and rmt. This forum is becoming a joke. No optional ploot because drop rates will be too low which will turn to cries to increase drop rate…uhh…let’s decrease drop rate. Opposite dichotomies. Don’t touch loot system! Uh…lower drop rates!
This is no slight to you Muyu, but all these opposites argued at the final bell before launch reeks of despiration by an elite mob to make sure they stay the elite in D2R.
